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THE mW DEPAETURE 



IN 



COLLEGE EDUCATION 



BEING A REPLY TO PRESIDENT ELIOT S 

DEFENCE OF IT IN NEW YORK 

FEB, 24, 1885 



1/ BY 

JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D., D.L. 

PRESIDENT OF PEINCETON COLLEGE 




NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1885 






V 



.^^^- 



Copyright, 1885, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER-S SONS 



TROW'3 

rniHTlNG AND BOOKDINDiNG COMPAHIT, 

NlW VCiRK. 



THE NEW DEPARTURE IN COLLEGE 
EDUCATION. 



I HAVE been drawn into tins three-cornered debate ' by 
no merit or demerit of mine. I was told by the Nineteenth 
Century Club that the President of Harvard was to advo- 
cate what was called his " new departure," and I was invited 
to criticize it. I have noticed with considerable anxiety 
that departure as going on for years past without parents or 
the public noticing it. I am glad that things have come to 
a crisis. Fathers and mothers and the friends of education 
will now know what is proposed, what is in fact going on, 
and will have to decide forthw^ith whether they are to fall 
in with and encourage it, or are to oppose it. 

I asked first what the question was. President Eliot 
has shaped it as follows : " In a university the student 

MUST CHOOSE HIS STUDIES AND GOVERN HIMSELF." I SaW at 

once that the question thus announced was large and loose, 
vague and ambiguous, plausible to the eai*, but with no 
definite meaning. But it commits its author to a positive 
position and gives me room to defend a great and good 
cause. The form is showy but I can expose it ; I can 

' The Nineteenth Century Club meant to make the debate three- 
cornered, hut somehow one of the sides of the triangle fell out, and in- 
stead of a triangle we have two sides facing each other. 



4 THE NEW DEPARTURE 

prick the bubble so that all may know how little matter is 
inside. 

On the one hand I am sorry that the defence of solid 
and high education should have devolved on me rather 
than on some more gifted advocate. But on the other 
liand I feel it to be a privilege that I am invited to oppose 
proposals which are fitted, without the people as yet seeing 
it, to throw back in America (as Bacon expresses it) " The 
Advancement of Learning." 

1 will not allow any one (without protest) to charge me 
with being antiquated, or old-fashioned, or behind the age 
— I may be an old man but I cherish a youthful spirit. 
For sixteen years I was a professor in the youngest and 
one of the most advanced universities in Great Britain, 
and I have now been sixteen years in an American college, 
and in both I have labored to elevate the scholarship. I 
act on the principle that every new branch of what has 
shown itself to be true learning is to be introduced into a 
college. My friends in America have encouraged me by 
generously giving me millions of money to carry out this 
idea. I am as much in favor of progress as President 
Eliot, but I go on in a different, I believe a better way. I 
adopt the new, I retain what is good in the old. I am dis- 
appointed, I am grieved when I find another course pur- 
sued which allows, which encourages, which tempts young 
men in their caprice to choose easy subjects, and which are 
not fitted to enlarge or refine the mind, to produce scholars, 
or to send forth the great body of the students as educated 
gentlemen. 

Freedom is the catch-word of this new departure. It 
is a precious and an attractive word. But, O Liberty ! what 
crimes and cruelties have been perpetrated in thy name ! 
It is a bid for popularity. An entering Freshman will be 
apt to cheer when he hears it — the prospect is so pleasant. 



ITT COLLEGE EDUCATION. 5 

Tlie leader in this departure will have many followers. 
The student infers from the language that he can study 
what he pleases. I can tell you what he will possibly or 
probably choose. Those who are in the secrets of colleges 
know how skilful certain students are in choosing their sub- 
jects. They can choose the branches wdiich will cost them 
least study, and put themselves under the popular professors 
who give them the highest grades with the least labor. I 
once told a student in an advanced stage of his course, " If 
you had shown as much skill in pursuing your studies as 
in choosing tlie easiest subjects you would have^ been the 
first man in your class," I am for freedom quite as much 
as Dr. Eliot is, but it is for freedom regulated by law. I 
am for liberty but not licentiousness, which always ends 
in servitude. 

I am to follow the President of Harvard in the three 
roads which he has taken ; placing positions of mine face 
to face with his : 

I. Fkeedom in choosing studies. 
II. Freedom in choosing specialties. 
III. Fkeedom in government. 



Freedom in Choosing Studies. — I am for freedom, but it 
must be within carefully defined limits. First, a young 
man should be free to enter a university or not to enter 
it. He is to be free to choose his department in that uni- 
versity, say Law or Medicine, or the Academic terminating 
in the Bachelor or Master's Degree. But, having made 
his choice, is he to have all possible freedom ever after ? 
At this point the most liberal advocate of liberty will be 
obliged to tell the student, '' We are now required to lay 



6 THE N^EW DEPARTURE 

some restraints Tipon you," and tlie youth finds his liberty 
is at an end. He has to take certain studies and give a 
certain amount of time to them, say, according to the Har- 
vard model, to select four topics. He goes in for Medi- 
cine : he may make his "^quartette Physical Geography, 
which tells what climate is ; and Art, which teaches us to 
paint the human frame ; and Music, which improves the 
voice ; and Lectures on the Drama, which show us how to 
assume noble attitudes. These seem more agreeable to 
him than Anatomy and Physiology, than Surgerj^and Ma- 
teria Medica, which present corpses and unpleasant odors. 
I tell you that, though this youth should get a diploma 
written on parchment, I would not, however ill, call him 
in to prescribe to me, as I might not be quite sure whether 
his medicines would kill or cure me. Or the intention of 
the youth is Engineering in order to make or drive a 
steam engine, and he does not take Mathematics, or Me- 
chanics, or Graphics, or Geodesy ; but as unlimited choice 
is given him, he prefers drawing and field work — when 
the weather is fine, and two departments of gymnas- 
tics — now so well taught in our colleges — namely, box- 
ing and wrestling. I tell you I am not to travel by 
the railway he has constructed. Put he has a higher 
aim: he is to take a course in the Liberal Arts and 
expects a Master's Degree ; but Greek and Mathematics 
and Physics and Mental Philosophy are all old and waxing 
older, and he takes French to enable him to travel in Eu- 
rope, and Lectures on Goethe to make him a German 
scholar, and a Pictorial History of the age of Louis XIV., 
and of the Theatre in ancient and modern times. This 
is a good year's work, and he can take a like course in 
each of the four years ; and if he be in Yale or Princeton 
College, he will in Spring and Fall substitute Base Ball 
and Foot Ball, and exhibit feats more wonderful than 



IN COLLEGE EDUCATIOiSr. 7 

were ever performed in the two classical countries, Greece 
and Rome, at their famous Olympian Games and Bull 
Fights. 

I have presented this designedly rude picture to show 
that there "must be some limits put to the freedom of 
choice in studies. The able leader of the new departure, 
with the responsibilities of a great College upon him, and 
the frank and honest gentleman, who has such a dread of 
a Fetish — the creature of his own imagination — will be 
ready to admit that in every department of a University 
there should be a well considered and a well devised cur- 
riculum of study. It is one of the highest and most im- 
portant functions of the governing bodies to construct snch 
a scheme. It should have in it two essential powers or 
properties. 

First, there should he hranches required of all students 
who pursue the full course and seek a degree. This is 
done in such departments as Engineering and Medicine 
and should be done in Arts. The obligatory branches 
should be wisely selected. They should all be fitted to 
enlarge or refine the mind. They should be fundamental, 
as forming the basis on which other knowledge is built. 
They should be disciplinary, as training the mind for 
further pursuits. Most of them should have stood the 
test of time and reared scholars in ages past. There will 
be found to be a wonderful agreement among educated 
men of liigh tastes as to what these should be. 

There should be included in them the eight studies on 
which examinations are held in order to entrance into 
Harvard College. These are 1, English ; 2, Greek ; 3, 
Latin ; 4, German ; 5, French ; 6, History ; 7, Mathe- 
matics ; 8, Physical Science. This is the scheme of pre- 
paratory studies just issued by Harvard. It seems to me 
to require too much from our schools. It will prevent 



8 THE NEW DEPARTURE 

many teachers who have hitherto sent students to college 
from doing so any more. Teachers in smaller towns 
and country districts will have to look to this. If the 
scheme is carried out fewer young men will come up to 
our colleges from such places. They will find that they 
cannot get French and German and physical apparatus in 
the schools available to them. Some of the branches had 
better be reserved for college, where they will be taught 
more effectively. But passing this by as not just to our 
present point, I put all these cardinal studies in the 
branches wdiich should be required in a college. 

In the farther courses of a college other obligatory 
studies should be added, such as Biology, including Botany 
and Zoology, Geology, Political Economy or better Social 
Science, and at least three branches of Mental Science, 
Psychology, Logic, and Ethics. All these by a wise ar- 
rangement could be taught in the three or four years at 
school and the four years of college. They should be 
judiciously spread over the 3'ears of school and college 
training ; a certain number of them in each successive 
year for every student. They should advance witli the age 
and progress of the student. They should follow one 
after another in logical order from the more elementaiy 
to the higher, which presuppose the lower. Thus Mathe- 
matics should come before Physics, and Biology before 
Geology, and Psychology before Logic and Ethics. 

Education is essentially the training of the mind— as the 
word educare denotes — the drawino; forth of the faculties 
which God has given us. This it should especially be in a 
University, in a Studmim Generate, as it used to be called. 
The powers of mind are numerous and varied, the senses, 
the memor}^, the fancy, judgment, reasoning, conscience, 
the feelings, the will ; the mathematical, the metaphysical, 
the mechanical, the poetical, the prosaic (quite as useful 



IN COLLEGE EDUCATION^. 9 

as any) ; and all these should be cultivated, the studies 
necessary to do so should be provided, and the student 
required so far to attend to them, that the joung man by 
exercise may know what powers he has and the mental 
frame be fully developed. To accomplish this end the 
degrees of Bachelor of Arts and of Master of Arts were in- 
stituted. These titles have acquired a meaning. For cen- 
turies past tens of thousands of eager youths have been 
yearly seeking for them and the attainments implied in 
them. True, the standard adopted in some colleges has 
been low — some who have got the diploma could not read 
the Latin in which it is written ; still it has a certain pres- 
tige and a considerable attractive power. It indicates, as 
to the great body of those who possess it, that they have 
some acquaintance with elevated themes, that in short they 
have some culture. I do not wish to have this stimulus 
withdrawn. I have been laboring for the last thirty-two 
years to elevate the requirements for the degree. But let 
it retain its meaning and carry out its meaning thoroughly. 
Let it be an evidence that the possessor of it has some 
knowledge of literature, science, and philosophy. 

I have no objection that other degrees be instituted, 
such as Bachelor of Literature, Bachelor of Science, but 
only on one condition, that examinations be deep, that they 
be rigid, that they imply a knowledge of the principles as 
well as of the details of the branches taught, that they cul- 
tivate the mind and elevate the tastes as well as fit men 
for professions. But let us retain in the meanwhile the old 
Bachelor and Master Degrees, only putting a new life into 
them. They should not be given to one who knows merely 
English and German, or one who knows merely chemistry 
and physics, still less to one who kno'^v's merely music and 
painting. Eminence in these has no right to assume, or 
in fact steal, the old title. Let each kind of degree have 




10 THE NEW DEPAETURE 

its own meaning and people will value it accordingly. But 
let A.B. and A.M. abide to attract youths to high general 
scholarship. 

Under this Academic Degree I would allow a certain 
amount of choice of studies, such as could not be tolerated 
in professional departments, as Law or Medicine. But 
there are -branches which no candidate for the degree 
should be allowed to avoid. There should be English, 
which I agree with President Eliot in regarding as about 
the most essential of all branches, it being taught in a 
scientific manner There should be Modern Languages, 
but there should^ also be Classics. A taste and a style are 
produced by the study of the Greek and Latin with their 
literatures, w^hich are expressively called Classic. It may 
be difficult to define, but we all feel the charm of it. If 
we lose this there is nothing in what is called our Modern 
Education to make up for the loss. President Eliot has 
a high opinion of German LFniversities, but the eminent . 
men in their greatest University, that of Berlin, have testi- 
fied that a far higher training is given in the Classical 
Gymnasia than in the scientific Heal Schule.^ 

There should be physical science, but there should also 
be mental and moral science required of alL In knowing 
other things our young men should be taught to know 
themselves. When our students are instructed only in 
matter they are apt to conclude that there is nothing but 
matter. Our colleges should save our promising youths, 
the hope of the coming age and ages, from materialism 

^ Professor Hoffmann, as Rector of Berlin University, says that it is tlie 
opinion of the University that ' * all efforts to find a substitute for the classi- 
cal languages, whether in mathematics, in the modern languages or in the 
natural sciences, have been hitherto unsuccessful." In Princeton College 
Dr. Young and the scientific professors unanimously are, if possible, more 
strongly in favor of Latin and Greek than even the classical professors. 



IjS^ college EDUCATION". 11 

with its degrading consequences. We must show them 
that man has a soul with loftj powers of reason ap<d con- 
science and free will, which make him immortal and en- 
able him so far to penetrate the secrets of nature, and by 
which he can rise to the knowledge of God. 

We in Princeton believe in a Trinity of studies: in 
Language and Literature, in Science, and in Philosophy. 
Every educated man should know so much of each of 
these. Without this, man's varied faculties are not trained, 
his nature is not fully developed and may become mal- 
formed. 

A college should give w^hat is best to its students, and 
it should not tempt them to w,hat is lower when the higher 
can be^had. Harvard boasts that it gives two hundred 
choices to its students, younger and older.^ I confess that 
I have had some difficulty in understanding her catalogue. 
I would rather study the whole Cosmos. It lias a great 
many perplexities, which 1 can compare only to the 
cycles, epicycles, eccentricities of the old astronomy, so 
much more complex than that of Newton. An examina- 

^ In Princeton we have nearly all the branches taught in Harvard, but 
we do not subdivide and scatter them as they do ; we put them under 
compacted heads. In his address to the Johns Hopkins University, Dr. 
Eliot refers to the supposed deficiency in teaching history in Princeton. 
In reply I have to state that we. have a small examination on the sub- 
ject for entrance ; that in the Sophomore year we use one of Freeman's 
text-books to give an elementary view of universal history ; that in the 
Junior and Senior the Professor of the Philosophy of History gives a 
historical and critical survey of the science and methods of history. 
More particularly each Professor is expected to give a history of his own 
branch, and so we have histories of Politics, of Philosophy, of Greece, 
of Rome, of the literature of Germany and of France, etc. I do not 
agree with Mr, J. S. Mill that history cannot be taught in a college (it 
would take forty years and more to go over all history) ; but I think the 
numerous narrative histories of epochs is just a let-off to easy-going 
students from tho studies which require thought. 



12 THE NEW DEPARTURE 

tion of students upon it would be a better test of a clear 
head than some of their subjects, such as " French Plays 
and I^ovels." As I understand it, one seeking a degree, 
may, in his free will choose the following course : 

In Sophomore Year — 

1. French Literature of the Seventeenth Century. 

2. Mediaeval and Modern European History. 

3. Elementary Course in Fine Art, with collateral in- 
struction in Water-coloring. 

4. Counterpoint (in music). 

In Junior Year — 

1. French Literature of the Eighteenth Century. 

2. Early Mediaeval History. 
8. Botany. 

4. History of Music. 

In Senior Year — 

1. French Literature of the Nineteenth Century. 

2. Elementary Spanish. 

3. Greek Art. 

4. Free Thematic Music* 

There are twenty such dilettanti courses which may be 
taken in Llarvard. I cannot allow that this is an advance 
in scholarship. If this be the modern education, I hold 
that the old is better. I would rather send a young 
man, in whom I was interested, to one of the old-fashioned 
colleges of the country, where he w^ould be constrained to 
study Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Hhetoric, Physics, Logic, 
Ethics, and Political Economy, and I am persuaded that his 
mind would thereby be better trained and he himself pre- 
pared to do higher and more important woi'k in life. From 

^ In tlie debate we were told that this is a deep study ; then the De- 
gree of Master of Music (M.M.) should be given to it, but not M.A. 



IN COLLEGE EDUCATION". 13 

the close of Freshman year on it is perfectly practicable for a 
student to pass through Harvard and receive the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts, without taking any course in Latin, 
Greek, Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Geol- 
ogy, Logic, Psychology, Ethics, Political Economy, Ger- 
man, or even English ! (If, as President Eliot insists, a 
knowledge of our mother-tongue is the true basis of cult- 
ure, w^hat is to be said of this ?) 

Secondly. It should he an essential feature of the course 
for a degree^ that the attendance of the student on lectures 
and recitations should he obligatory. This is a very im- 
portant matter. The student may have freedom in his 
choice, but having made his election he should be bound 
to attend on the instruction imparted. He should not be 
allowed to attend the one day and stay away the next. A 
professor should not be subjected to the disadvantage of 
only a portion of his students, say a half or a third, being 
present at any one lecture, and of the students who attend 
not being the same continuously. Parents living far away 
from the college-seat should have some security that their 
sons professing to be at college are not all the winter skat- 
ing on the ice, or shooting canvasback-ducks on Chesa- 
peake Bay. 

But it is said that if a student can stand an examination, 
it is no matter where he gets his knowledge. There is an 
enormous fallacy lurking here. I admit that a youth may 
make himself a scholar without being at a college or sub- 
mitting to its examinations. But if he goes to college let 
him take all its advantages. One of these is to be placed 
under a continuous course of instruction in weekly, almost 
daily, intercourse with his professors, keeping him at his 
work and encouraging him in it. It is thus that the aca- 
demic taste, thus that the student spirit with its hard work 
is created and fostered. 




14 THE NEW DEPAETUEE 

I have had thorough means of becoming acquainted 
with those systems in which there is no required attend- 
ance ; and I testify that they do not tend to train high 
scholars. Everything depending on a final examination, 
the student is sure to be tempted to what is called cra'tn- 
ming. A student once told me what this led to in his own 
experience. In five of the branches taught to his class, 
he spread his daily studies over the year ; but in one he 
trusted to cramming. I said to him, " Tell me honestly 
what is the issue." He answered, " In the ^q branches I 
remember everything and could stand another examina- 
tion to-day, but in the one — it happened to be botany — 
it is only four weeks since I was examined on it, but my 
mind is a blank on the whole subject." 

I know that in Germany they produce scholars wdthout 
requiring a rigid attendance, and I rather think that in a 
few American colleges, they are aping this German method, 
thinking to produce equally diligent students. They for- 
get that the Germans have one powerful safeguard which 
we have not in America. For all ofiices in Church and 
State there is an examination by high scholars following 
the college course. A young man cannot get an ofiice as 
clergyman, as teacher, as postmaster, till he is passed by 
that terrible examining bureau, and if he is turned by them 
his prospects in life are blasted.' Let the State of Massa- 
chusetts pass a law like the Prussian, and Harvard may 
then relax attendance, and the State will do what the col- 
leges have neglected to do.'' 

' Tlie Germans have, besides, tlieir admirable gymnasien, Trliere all 
is prescribed, and which give instruction equivalent to that of the 
Freshman and Sophomore years in American colleges. 

^ President Eliot would not have students enter college till they are 
eighteen years of age. If this be carried out it is evident that we shall 
have fewer young men taking a college education. A large number 



IN COLLEGE EDUCATION. 



15 



II. 



Specialties in Study. — Men have special talents, and so 
they should have special studies provided for tliem. They 
are to have special vocations in life, and college youth 
should so far be prepared for them. Every student should 
have Obligatory studies, but he should also be allowed 
Elective studies. The branches of knowledge are now so 
numerous and literature is so wide and varied, that no one 
can master it all; should he try to do so, he would only be 
" a jack of all trades and a master of none." 

The student should have two kinds of electives provided 
for him. He may be allowed to take subjects which could 
not be required of all, such, for example, as Sanscrit, Anglo- 
Saxon, the Semitic Tongues, and in science, Histology and 
Physical Geography. • No college should make these ob- 
ligatory, and yet considerable numbers of students would 
prize them much and get great benefit from them, to fit 
them for their farther study and life-work. Or, the stu- 
dent, after taking certain elementary branches, should have 
higher forms of the same provided for him, and be encour- 
aged to take them. Of all the rudimentary branches or 
cardinal studies, there should be a course or courses re- 
quired of all in order to. make them educated gentlemen. 



cannot afford to continue till twenty-five before they earn any money ; 
not entering college till eighteen, continuing three or four years and 
spending other three years in learning a profession. In many cases many 
young men might be ready to enter college at sixteen, graduate at twenty, 
and then learn their professions. This would suit the great body of 
students. But one in ten, or one in five who have acquired a taste for 
more should be encouraged to remain in college, to take post-graduate 
courses, and devote themselves to special studies. We encourage tliis 
in Princeton by seven or eight endowed Fellowships, and have always 30, 
40, or 50 post-graduate students. In this way we hope to rear scholars. 



16 THE NEW DSPAKTUEE 

but there should be advanced courses — Electives, to produce 
liigh scholars in all branches, literary, linguistic, scientific, 
philosophic. All students should know several of the 
highest languages, ancient and modern, but there should 
be advanced linguistic studies, and especially a science of 
Comparative Language. I defy you to make all master 
Quaternions, or Quantics, or Functions, but these should 
be in the college for a select few. All should be taught 
the fundamental laws of the human mind, but there should 
also be a number entering into tlie depths and climbing 
the heights, of the Greek, the Scotch, and the German 
philosophies. 

I hold that in a college with the variety there should be 
a unity. The circle of the sciences should have a wide 
circumference but also a fixed centre. In every year there 
sliould be certain primary and radical studies required of 
every student, with all the wdiile a diversity in his elec- 
tives. This I take the liberty of saying is the difference 
between Harvard and Princeton. In Harvard there are now 
in no year any studies obligatory on all except a part of 
I Freshman year studies — everything is scattered like the 
I star dust out of which worlds are formed. Greek is not 
obligatory ; Mathematics are not obligatory ; Logic and 
Ethics are not obligatory. . In Princeton a number of 
disciplinary branches are required, and so many are re- 
quired in each year to give us a central sun with rotating 
planets. In ]N"ature, as Herbert Spencer lias shown, there 
is differentiation which scatters, but there is also concen- 
tration wdiich holds things together. There should be the 
same in higher education. In a college there may be, 
there should be specialists, but not niere specialists, who 
are siu^e to be narrow, partial, malformed, one-sided, and 
are apt to become conceited, prejudiced, and intolerant. 
The other day a gymnast showed me his upper arm with 



IJS^ COLLEGE EDUCATION. 17 

tlie muscle large and hard as a mill-stone. It is a picture 
o£ the mental monstrosities produced by certain kinds of 
education. The tanner insists that "there is nothing like 
leather," and the literateur^ that there is nothing like lan- 
guage ; while the mathematician assures you that there is 
nothing to be believed except what can be demonstrated ; 
leading Goethe to say, "As if, forsooth, things only exist 
when they can be mathematically demonstrated. It w^ould be 
foolish in a man not to believe in his mistress' love because 
she could not prove it to him mathematically ; she can 
mathematically prove her dowry but not her love." 

Dr. Eliot tells us he has found great ditficulties in com- 
bining the Prescribed and the Elective Courses. In my 
thirty-two years' college teaching I have met wath no such 
difficulty. On the contrary I have found them working 
in harmony. Thus I have found the Prescribed study in 
Greek helping me in the Elective History of Philosophy.' 
. It is now shown that all science is correlated, and every 
one thing depends on every other. Humboldt had his 
" Cosmos," and Mr. Grove his " Correlation of the Forces," 
and the Duke of Argyll has his " Unity of IS'ature." 
Nature is a system like the solar, wdth a sun in the cen- 
tre and planets and satellites all around, held together by 
a gravitating power wdiich keeps each in its proper place, 
and all shining on each other. You cannot study any one 
part comprehensively without so far knowing the others. 
In like manner, all the parts of a good college curriculum 
should be connected in an organic w^hole. Make a man a 
mere specialist and the chance is he will not reach the 
highest eminence as a specialist. The youth most likely 
to make discoveries is one who has studied collateral sub- 

• ' At tlie New York meeting I distributed the Plan of Study in Prince' 
ion College, showing how we carry into practical operation the principles 
laid down in this paper and combine the general with the special. 



18 THE ]^EW DEPARTUEE 

jects ; the well giislies out at a certain point because the 
rains have descended on a large surface and entered the 
earth, and must find an outlet. 

1 may here point out the evils little noticed arising from 
a boy having too many choices ; they say two hundred in 
Harvard. I believe that comparatively few young men 
know what their powers are when they enter college. 
Many do not yet know what their undeveloped faculties 
are ; quite as many imagine that they have talents which 
they do not possess. Fatal mistakes may arise from a 
youth of sixteen or eighteen committing himself to a nar- 
row-gauge line of study, and he finds when it is too late 
that he should have taken a broader road. 

A young man, we may suppose, when he enters college 
leaves out Greek, attracted by a popular teacher of French. 
"When he has done so he finds, as he comes to Junior year, 
that a voice, as it were, from God, calls him to preach the 
gospel of salvation. Then he comes to see his mistake, 
for if he has to be an expounder of Scripture, he must 
know the language of the Isew Testament, and to attain 
this he must go back two or three years to school, and, un- 
willing to do this, he gives up studying for the ministry. 
The Churches of Christ will do well to look to this new 
departure, for they may find that they have fewer candi- 
dates for the ofiice of the ministry. The Colleges may 
have to look to this, for tbe churches furnish to them the 
most constant supply of students. For myself, I fear that 
the issue will be an unfortunate division of colle2:es into 
Christian and infidel. 

Alike result may follow from other unfortunate choices, 
as we say, from young men " mistaking their trade." One 
who might have turned out a splendid teacher devotes 
himself to metaphysics and neglects classics and mathe- 
matics. Another who might have become a statesman 



1 



I^ COLLEGE EDUCATIOIT. 



19 



has avoided logic and political economy, being allured by 
music and plays. The boy has turned away from mathe- 
matics to find that in his future study and professional 
work he absolutely needs them. 



III. 

/Self Government. — I hold that in a college, as in a coun- 
try, there should be government ; there should be care 
over the students, with inducements to good conduct, and 
temptations removed, and restraints on vice. There should 
be moral teaching ; I believe also religious teaching — the 
rights of conscience being always carefully preserved. But 
one part of this instruction should be to inculcate indepen- 
dence, independence in thinking, independence in action 
and self-control. The student should be taught to think 
for himself, to act for himself. If he does not acquire this 
spirit, no external authority will be able to guide and re- 
strain him. I abhor the plan of secretly watching students, 
of peeping through windows at night, and listening through 
key-holes. Under the sp7/ system, the students will always 
beat their tutors. The tricky fellows will escape, while only 
the simple will be caught. 

But is there, therefore, to be no moral teaching, no re- 
straint on conduct ? Are students to be allured away from 
their homes, hundreds and thousands of miles away, from 
California, Oregon, and Florida, to our Eastern colleges, 
and there do as they please — to spend their evenings ac- 
cording to their inclinations, to keep no Sabbaths, and all 
the while get no advice, no warning from the college au- 
thorities ? They see a student going into a liquor store, a 
dancing saloon, a low theatre, a gambling-house. Are they 
to do nothing ? Are they precluded from doing anything ? 



20 



THE E^EW DEPARTURE 



A student is seen drunk. Wliat are you to do witli liim ? 
" The law is not made for tlie righteous man, but for the 
lawless and disobedient." Have you no law to reach him ? 
You have no right to discipline him. It is an interference 
with his freedom. He is a man, and not a boy, and he 
should resent it. He is able to guide himself. His wid- 
owed mother lives a thousand miles away, and cannot reach 
him. He continues in this course. Are you to allow him 
to remain in the institution to ruin himself and corrupt 
others ? Y6u answer, we w^ll send him away. But you 
cannot do so (so. I hope) without evidence, and this im- 
plies that horrid thing, discipline. But you dismiss him. 
I have^ been obliged to dismiss students on rare occasions. 
It is a terrible ordeal to me. I have sometimes felt more 
than fhe student himself. And when the father comes to 
me, the" father trying to suppress the bursting feeling, and 
the mother in agony which cannot be restrained, I am 
crushed, I am prostrated.- But my cre^d is, prevention is 
better than punishment. Surely, if we have the right to 
dismiss and expel (I never expelled a student), we have 
th^ liberty to instruct, to advise, to remonstrate, nay, to 
(discipline. I have some painful scenes to pass through in 
the government of a college, but I have had more pleasant 
ones. I have to testify that three-fourths, I believe nine- 
tenths, of the cases of discipline I have administered have 
ended in the reformation of the offender. I have been 
gratified by many fathers and mothers thanking me for 
saving their sons from ruin. Scores of graduates, when 
they meet me, have said, "I thank you for that sharp 
rebuke you gave me ; you gave it heartily, and I was irri- 
tated at the time, but now I thank you as heartily, for I 
was arrested thereby when rushing into folly." 

It is time that fathers and mothers should know what 
it is proposed to do with their sons at college. The college 



IN COLLEGE EDUCATIOI^. * 21 

authorities are in, no way to interfere with them. They 
are to teach them Music and Art, and French Plays and 
]^ove]s, but there is no course in the Scriptures — in their 
poetry, their moralitj^, their spirituality. The President 
of Harvard recommends that all colleges should be in great 
cities. Students are to be placed in- the midst of saloons, 
and gambling-houses, and temples of Yenus, but mean- 
while no officer of the college is to preach to them, to deal 
with them. Suppose that under temptation the son falls. 
I can conceive a father saying to the head of the institu- 
tion, " I sent my son to you believing that man is made in 
the image of God, you taught him that he is an upper 
brute, and he has certainly become so ; I sent him to you 
pure, and last night he was carried to my door^drunk. 
Curse ye this college ; . ' curse ye bitterly,' for you took 
no pains to allure him to good, to admonish, to pray for 
him." I was once addressed by a mother in very nearly 
these words. 1 was able to show that her son had come to 
us a polluted boy from an ungodly school, andlhat we had 
dealt with him kindly, warned him solemnly, disciplined 
liim, given notice of his conduct to his mother, and prayed 
for him. Had I riot been able to say thi^ conscientiously 
I believe I would that day have given in my resignation of 
the office I hold, and retired to a wilderness to take charge 
of myself, feeling that I was not competent to take care of 
others. 

It is a serious matter what we are to do to provide re- 
ligious studies in our colleges: Professor Huxley knows 
that tliei-e is little or nothing in our ordinary school 
books to mould and form the character of children, and 
so, as member of the London School Board, he votes for 
the reading of the Scriptures in the schools, not that he 
believes them, but because they are fitted to sway the 
mind, — which I remark they are able to do, because they 



22 THE KEW DEPARTURE 

are divine. Everybody knows that science alone is not fit 
to form or gnard morality ; and Herbert Spencer is very 
anxious about this transition period, when the old has 
passed away (so he thinks) and the new morality is not yet 
published. Emerson stood up manfully for the retention 
of prayers in Harvard University. Are ^ve now in our 
colleges to give up preaching ? to give up Bible instruc- 
tion ? to give up prayers ? But I am on the borders of 
the religious question, on which I now formally propose 
that This club should have another meeting^ in lohich Pres- 
ident Eliot will defend the oieio departicre in the religion 
of colleges^ and I engage with God^s help to meet h'lnn} 

In closing, I have to confess that I regard this new de- 
parture with deep anxiety. The scholarship of America 
is not yet equal to that of Germany or Great Britain. 
Some^of us are anxious to raise it up to the standard of 
Europe. "We are discouraged by this plan of Harvard to 
allow and encourage its students to take branches in which 
there is so little to promote high intellectual culture. We 
know what a galaxy of great men appeared in Harvard an 
age ago, under the old training. I know that it is keenly 
discussed, within the college itself, whether there is any- 
thing in the present and coming modes of dissipated in- 
struction to rear men of the like intellectual calibres. Has 
there been of late any great poem, any great scientific dis- 
covery, any great history, any great philosophic work, by 
the young men of Cambridge ? I observe that the literary 
journals, for which our young writers prepare articles, have 
now fixed their seat in New York rather than Boston. 

The wise leaders of the new departure do not propose to 
fight against religion. They do not fight with it, but they 
are quite willing to let it die out, to die in dignity. They 

' I am waiting to hear wlietlier this challenge is accepted. 



IN COLLEGE EDUCATION. 23 

liave put severe learning on a sliding scale, not it may be in 
order to a sudden fall, but insensibly to go down to the level 
of those boys who do not wish to think deeply or study 
hard. I am glad things have come to a crisis. Let par- 
ents know it, let the churches know it, let all America 
know it, let scholars in Europe know it, let the world 
know it — for what is done in Harvard has influence over 
the world. But some timid people will say, " Tell it not 
in the lands whence our pious fathers came that the col- 
lege whose motto is I^ro Ohristo et Ecclesia teaches no 
religion to its pupils. Tell it not in Berlin or Oxford that 
the once most illustrious university in America no longer 
requires its graduates to know the most perfect language, 
the grandest literature, the most elevated thinking of all 
antiquity. Tell it not in Paris, tell it not in Cambridge 
in England, tell it not in Dublin, that Cambridge in 
America does not make mathematics obligatory on its stu- 
dents. Let not Edinburgh and Scotland and the Puritans 
in England know that a student may pass through the 
once Puritan College of America without having taken a 
single class of philosophy or a lesson in religion. But 
whatever others may do, I say^ I say, let Europe know in 
all its universities — I wish my voice could reach them all 
— that in a distinguished college in America a graduate 
need no longer take what the ages have esteemed the 
highest department of learning ; and I believe that such 
an expression of feeling will be called forth, that if we 
cannot avert the evil in Harvard we may arrest it in 
the other colleges of the country. 



